"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 02 - Commitment Hour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

As I sat on the log that night, I considered taking up my bow and giving the dragonflies a thank-you
serenade. Of course, I'd brought my violin with me—I never left the cottage without it under my arm,
even when I set out to my "day job" hauling nets on the perch boats. The violin made my work easier: in
the middle of the afternoon, someone would always say to me, "Fullin, we could sure use a tune." Then I
passed a couple hours playing "The Maiden and the Hungry Pigboy" while the other men bent their
backs.

We all thought it was a fair exchange.

I had taken the violin out and was softly tuning the strings when a song drifted to me from the far end of
the marsh.

I will come to you in winter.

Though we lay us down in snow,

It cannot chill us.

Cappie, waxing romantic. In the years she was a man, her voice was a fine bass, a rough-edged rumble
like Master Thunder's lament for his fallen son. Many times I'd told her she could polish that voice into a
real moneymaker, if she just made the effort. But in the years she was a woman her voice was
scabby—thin as a reed and apt to wobble on anything longer than a quarter note. The pity was, she liked
to sing as a woman; as a man, she was the silent type who stared moodily into campfires.

I will stay with you through spring.

Though the wild Nor'westers blow,

They cannot spill us.

Lately she'd taken to singing every day: drippy sentimental songs that she directed toward me with a
delivery she'd picked up from a throb-woman who passed through Tober Cove with a troupe of traveling
players. By popular request I'd gone to the platform to accompany the singer in a tune, and this woman
had chosen a moist little ballad designed to set men drooling. You know the kind of song I'm talking
about—performed with so many hip grinds, you can't tell whether the woman is singing actual words or
just bed-whinnies. Because I was on the stage with her, most of the bump'n'hump was aimed at me... not
that I noticed it much. While the woman was trying to rub up against me, I was working hard just to
make sure the pointed end of my violin bow didn't poke out her eye. Still, Cappie got the idea I'd been
aroused by all that slinking and strutting, and had taken to doing her own torch routines for my benefit.
Let me tell you, Cappie was no South-city seductress—it was all I could do not to cringe every time she
began to shimmy.

I will dance with you through summer.

Though the heat makes rivers slow,

It cannot still us.

Cappie had also started to ask what sex I was going to Commit to. The laws of the Patriarch expressly
prohibited discussing the choice, but that didn't matter; when Cappie was a woman, she disregarded any